Thursday, August 29, 2013

Floriade is on the horizon

Our new Guinea Fowl

It’s been really busy here lately, the project we are working on at Floriade is coming along nicely, it’s been such a privilage to work with so many great and talented people from so many differnet and diverse community groups and businesses. As construction of the project gets underway in the next week or so I’ll put pictures up of our sites progress.

A couple of weeks ago we ran an Introduction to Permaculture course for the Floriade volunteers. Together with Trish McEwan and ten other presenters we spent two days talking about the principals and ethics of Permaculture and demonstrating various methods and techniques for growing food in the urban back yard.

On the farm we have been struggling a little with a lack of feed at the moment. This year it seems a little different to previous years. We’ve not had as serve a winter as usual, but it’s been a little drier than we expected. Thank goodness all our pastures are starting to come out of their dormant period and tiny green regrowth is sprouting up everywhere.

On top of this, we have just been notified by the local Buttercup Bakery will no longer be selling their stale bread to farmers. The stale bread made up only a small portion of their daily feed ration, but we aill still have to replace it with grain or something similar.

On a much happier note we have been going gang busters as far as everything else goes. Our brand new shed with lock up work shop has finally been finished. This will be converted into a classroom over the summer as I have time. It’s so nice to have a couple of weather proof structures now where we can sotre all our valuable tools and equipment. We have started a market garden area above the pigs. I just recieved today another five cider apple trees to go with the five I purchasd earlier. The first lot were planted during a food forest course we ran in August. These trees will be interplanted with walnuts, and some perennial veg, hopefully I’ll get both asparagus and artichokes into this area.

Next on the list are some olive trees, I have still got a few chestnuts and hazelnuts to plant first – going to be a busy weekend.

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- Sustainable - Ethical - Local – Valley View Farm is a small family farm featuring a rustic old tumbled down cottage on the plains of the Southern Tablelands, filled with animals both big and small – the cottage that is!.